Science and technology in Switzerland

Science and technology in Switzerland play an important role in the Swiss economy as very few natural resources are available in the country. The Swiss National Science Foundation, mandated by the Federal government, is the most important institute promoting scientific research.

The still active NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are powered by Swiss-built motors.[1]
The Learning Center of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). A famous building of the Lausanne campus.
The Tokamak à configuration variable, research fusion reactor, at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
The Swiss solar aircraft Solar Impulse 2 achieved the longest non-stop solo flight in history and was the first to perform a solar-powered aerial circumnavigation of the globe between 2015 and 2016.

The raw output of scientific research from Switzerland consistently ranks within the top 20.[2]

Institutions

Universities
Main article: List of universities in Switzerland

The first university, the University of Basel, was founded in 1460 and today the country has twelve universities.

Research institutes

Museums

Researchers
Some famous Swiss scientists: Leonhard Euler, Louis Agassiz, Albert Einstein and Auguste Piccard

With 57% of its researchers coming from other countries, Switzerland is the country with the world highest proportion of foreign researchers.[4][5]

Scientific

Astronomy and space program
Main article: Swiss Space Office
Oerlikon Space supplies the payload fairings for the Ariane 5 launcher.

Switzerland Space Agency, the Swiss Space Office, has been involved in various space technologies and programs. In addition it was one of the 10 founders of the European Space Agency in 1975 and is the seventh largest contributor to the ESA budget. In the private sector, several companies are implicated in the space industry such as RUAG Space (payload fairings) or Maxon Motors (mars rovers).

Claude Nicollier is a Swiss Astronaut and flew several missions with the United States space program.

In the field of astronomy, Michel Mayor discovered in 1995, 51 Pegasi B, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star.[6]

Mathematics
See also: Swiss Mathematical Society

Leonhard Euler is considered to be the preeminent mathematician of the 18th century and one of the greatest of all time. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all." [7] Euler made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion of a mathematical function.

The Bernoulli family produced many notable scientists (Bernoulli number, Bernoulli's principle, Bernoulli's rule...).

Physics

Albert Einstein (naturalized in 1901) [8] was probably one of the greatest physicists of all time. He is known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2 and also contributed in many other areas (cosmology, solid state physics). Einstein was named "Person of the Century" by Time.

More recently, in 1987, Karl Alexander Müller received the Nobel prize for his work on High-temperature superconductivity.

Furthermore, the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is located in Switzerland near Geneva.

Chemistry

In the field of chemistry Germain Henri Hess is known for his discovery of the Hess's law. Albert Hofmann discovered the Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Paul Hermann Müller received the Nobel prize for his discovery of the insecticidal qualities of DDT.

Engineering

Biological and earth sciences

Friedrich Miescher was a Swiss physician who was the first researcher to isolate and characterize Nucleic acid (DNA). Today, a research institute in Basel (the Friedrich Miescher Institute, FMI) is named after him.[9] Emil Theodor Kocher (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1909) was known for his work in the physiology, pathology and surgery of the thyroid. The neurologist Walter Rudolf Hess (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949) mapped the areas of the brain that were responsible for the control of several vital bodily functions. The biochemist Werner Arber (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1978) is known for his discovery of restriction endonucleases which are essential for all modern biotechnology. The Swiss born Edmond H. Fischer (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1992) discovered how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins. Rolf M. Zinkernagel (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1996) is famous for his work on the immune system.

Psychology

Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration.

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See also

Notes and references
  1. Swiss technology powers Mars mission swissinfo.ch 20 February 2002
  2. Top 20 Country Rankings in All Fields, 2006, Thomson Corporation, retrieved 30 March 2009.
  3. Jigme Garne, Elisabetta Antonelli (20 November 2014). "Technorama vermehrt auf Sponsoring angewiesen" (in German). Der Landbote. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
  4. (in French) Olivier Dessibourg, "La Suisse, carrefour de la circulation des cerveaux", Le Temps, Thursday 15 November 2012, p. 14.
  5. See also academic mobility.
  6. Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (1995). "A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star". Nature. 378 (6555): 355–359. Bibcode:1995Natur.378..355M. doi:10.1038/378355a0.
  7. Dunham, William (1999). Euler: The Master of Us All. The Mathematical Association of America. xiii. "Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous."
  8. "Einstein's nationalities at einstein-website.de". Retrieved 30 March 2009.
  9. http://www.fmi.ch/
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